With the best of the summer now behind us, I hope to return to a
more regular schedule for these columns. To start things off, the
recent release of a number of films noir has prompted me to provide
some background on this movement. (Much of the information presented
is drawn from the film noir books of Alain Silver.) I'll also be
providing some recommendations concerning titles already available
on DVD and reviews of Image's Too Late
for Tears and Warner Bros.' Film
Noir Classic Collection. Naturally, there's also the
regular update on new classic announcements to round out this week's
column.

Film Noir

The term "film noir" is usually attributed to cinema
enthusiast Nino Frank in 1946, and arose because French critics
identified a number of American films reaching France after World
War II as having common themes and styles. Many of these films were
based on the novels of the likes of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell
Hammett, and James M. Cain - detective fiction that the French
called "noir", or black. Hence the "film noir"
designation. Since that time, film noir has continued to pique the
imagination of film critics and analysts. Debates still rage over
whether film noir is a genre or a style or a movement, whether it
has an auteurist component, whether it has a Eurocentric basis
because of the many European expatriate directors who worked on such
films in America, whether certain more recent films can be correctly
identified as film noir, and so on. One has only to scan through the
many film noir books on the film literature shelves of any good
bookstore to appreciate the various points of view and heated
positions on them that abound. Like much of film literature in the
academic rather than pop realm, one must be prepared for needlessly
obtuse writing in many instances. Generally, however, one cannot go
wrong with some of the efforts edited by Alain Silver and his
co-workers. His Film Noir: An
Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style in
association with Elizabeth Ward, and The
Noir Style in association with James Ursini are excellent
starting points. Of course, one can always look to Barry Gifford's
The Devil Thumbs a Ride for a
more informal approach and one that generally derides the
convolutions of excessive academic analysis - a point of view with
which I and any true lover of classic films have a certain sympathy.

Ultimately, it's not very important whether one chooses to call
film noir a genre or a style or a cycle or whatever. After all, it's
the enjoyment of the films that's paramount. Personally, however, I
lean towards referring to such films as a cycle. There were a number
of factors present in the years between the two World Wars that
gradually converged, allowing individual film noirs to blossom. The
end of the Second World War provided the conditions appropriate for
such films to reach their zenith. As a result, the main film noir
cycle is usually taken to be the period from 1945 to 1957, although
there were certainly important films noir released both before and
after those years.

Among the various factors, hard-boiled detective fiction has
already been mentioned. The likes of Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe who
sprang from the pens of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler
respectively were world-weary men who saw themselves as constantly
at odds with society, suspicious of or disillusioned by its members
whether they be representatives of a corruptible law enforcement
establishment or untrustworthy clients with supposed injustices
needing correction. This disillusionment is one of the main
characteristics of film noir. Films such as The
Maltese Falcon (1941) and Murder,
My Sweet (1944) owe most of their film noir pedigree to
this factor. The hard-boiled detective also introduced the dominance
of the urban environment to such films.

A second important factor was the American gangster phenomenon
along with its criminal organizations. The gangster films of the
late 1920s/early 1930s and the genre's revitalization in the late
1930s/early 1940s provide some of the titles that are commonly
regarded as early examples of film noir today - City
Streets (1931), Beast of the
City (1932), High Sierra
(1941), and This Gun for Hire
(1942). One might ask, why these titles and not numerous other
gangster films of the same era? The answer lies in film noir's
concentration on fate and its often unexpected intervention in the
otherwise rational order of everyday life. The protagonist in High
Sierra, for example, is driven to his doom by such twists
of fortune rather than some excess of his own.

The third key factor was the influx into the United States of
foreign filmmakers before and during World War II that provided one
of the main components of film noir - its visual style. The likes of
Joseph von Sternberg, Fritz Lang, Edgar Ulmer, Robert Siodmak, Billy
Wilder, and Otto Preminger introduced the components of German
expressionism that can subsequently be found in virtually all films
noir - from low-key photography to moving cameras, shots from
unusual angles, reflected lighting taking advantage of wet surfaces
or shiny objects, and so on. Some of these directors' early American
films are considered film noir examples (von Sternberg's Underworld
[1927] and Thunderbolt [1929],
and Lang's Fury [1936] and
You Only Live Once [1937]) and
many of their later ones are key entries in the genre (Wilder's Double
Indemnity [1944], Preminger's Laura
[1944], Siodmak's Phantom Lady
[1944], and Ulmer's Detour
[1945]. The interesting thing is that even when these directors were
not involved, the style they introduced seemed to dominate no matter
what the studio or who the filmmaker. RKO, for example, was the
studio that became most identified with film noir. One may perhaps
attribute this to its experience with the making of Citizen
Kane (1941), for that collaboration between director
Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland (which owed much to
German expressionism) seems to have inspired the studio's filmmakers
to utilize that duo's lighting and camera techniques in RKO's later
films.

With an expressionist style, the disillusionment of the hard-boiled
detective and powerless gangster, and their natural urban setting as
key ingredients combining to create many of the early film noir
classics, the end of World War II added another class of
disillusioned individuals - the veterans returning to civilian life.
Many were unable to deal with the return easily, due to the
emotional and sometimes physical changes that combat had caused.
Relatively speaking, society was unchanged, but these individuals
were greatly altered so that what had seemed acceptable before, now
seemed irrelevant or even perverse. Further such individuals were
often ordinary men, distinct from the larger-than-life detective and
gangster figures that had dominated film noir to that point. The
theme of an ordinary guy out of step with society was manifest in
tales rooted in alienation and obsession that provided all sorts of
grist for the film noir mill.

The end of the war also saw the rise of other contributing factors
including McCarthyism and the threat of nuclear war (both providing
the atmosphere of fear that film noir often portrayed), the demise
of the B picture (with block booking no longer possible, films had
to stand on their own merits and film noir contained the ingredients
for films that appealed to audiences and hence pulled in the
exhibitors' interest), and technical advances in the film industry
(the location shooting that characterized much of film noir
benefited from advances in film stock and more portable camera
equipment and power supplies). As a result the years 1945 and 1946
are often viewed as denoting the real beginning of the film noir
cycle. The cycle's heyday would last until 1957.

A Film Noir Listing

The following chronological listing of film noir covers the period
up to 1965. Films released thereafter which have occasioned debate
as to whether they should be classified as film noir include, among
others, the likes of Point Blank
(1967), Marlowe (1969), Dirty
Harry (1971), The Long Goodbye
(1973), Chinatown (1974), Night
Moves (1975), Taxi Driver
(1976), Body Heat (1981), and
The Grifters (1991). Included
in the listing are a number of B titles from the likes of Monogram,
Eagle Lion (EL), Film Classics FC), and PRC, although it is likely
incomplete in this respect. Of course, many of such films are open
to debate as to whether they're real film noirs or simply cheaply
made suspense films or whodunits. Included also are several westerns
with noir sensibilities (such as Pursued
[1947] or Colorado Territory
[1948, a western remake of High Sierra]).
For the 474 titles listed, the year 1947 has the most releases with
54, but it or any of the two or three years before or after offer
strong credentials to be the year with the highest caliber of noir
releases. RKO was the most prolific distributor with 62 releases,
closely followed by United Artists with 59. Note that those films
available on or announced for DVD in Region 1 are highlighted in
Yellow. Titles on DVD in
Region 2 but not in Region 1 are highlighted in Green.
The DVD company source is noted. For those titles in the public
domain and available from multiple companies, only the source known
or believed to supply the best-looking version is listed.
Recommendations are provided for those releases offering a superior
mix of film quality and DVD presentation.